


Losing Grip on Ourselves

by LA_Dmitri



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Addiction, Body Horror, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Multi, Nobody gets a happy ending, Unhealthy Relationships, basically this is really sad and morbid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 21:37:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15324864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LA_Dmitri/pseuds/LA_Dmitri
Summary: Three years' worth of addiction to a dangerously potent drug is enough ground to want to break ties. But Ruvik can't bring himself to stay away from Sebastian. Caught in the misery of drug dealing and a relationship growing on his psyche like a tumor, happiness and success don't come easy in a city named after the blood covering its darkest corners.





	Losing Grip on Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> I already know this isn't going to be very long because the events of this work are at the tail-end of a preexisting story-line. Not every story that needs to be told is cheery or lengthy. This is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. I hope you enjoy, regardless. 
> 
> Also, here's a fair warning for the use of the word f----t, if you're sensitive to that.

**CHAPTER I. ✦ PART I.**

**RUVIK.**

 

When we were younger, I thought, perhaps, I could be loved. 

What a hopelessly stupid fantasy. I should have left that nonsense in my youth. I should have let it go up in flames with my sister, my flesh, and any shred of hope for future normalcy. Love is not something given freely or easily to men with scarred flesh and sordid pasts. It is not the Hollywood daydream so many frail souls view it as through rose coloured glasses. Love is not going to save me from my past, it is not going to protect me from my present, and it certainly isn’t going to intervene in my squalid future. 

I often recoiled when love or other such foolish emotions were presented to me. Yet, despite my best efforts to wring out the life from this nonsensical notion, it still lingers in my temporal lobe and blossoms into a migraine.  

Love. Such a primal desire. It leaves little room for coherent decency. I thought I could be loved. I  _ wanted  _ to be loved. But I know now that I don’t need to be loved. It is little  more than an ingrained desperation. A function of an overactive limbic system. 

After all, how could I possibly be loved by someone who tried to find his purpose at the lit end of a cigarette and the bottom of a bottle? Watching him drink and smoke the pain of life away was tragedy in motion. Such a lack of self-efficacy. Such a pitiful lack of restraint. 

My relationship with Sebastian Castellanos was and is akin to a miscarriage in a dirty gas station restroom. Dead on arrival, over before even being granted a chance to begin. I passed him through my system like a kidney stone. Six years of my life I wasted on a man who strung me out and left me to dry, pulling excuse after excuse out of his ass until I finally left. I tried to never look back, but my past is a poltergeist. To be honest, I’m still hungover from being drunk on a sorry excuse for love. 

It makes no sense that I would actively seek out the man who turned my preconceived ideas of love into an angry headache. 

I suppose then, it should come as no surprise that many things I do make little sense. Such as sitting in Krimson City’s only twenty-four hour cafe, waiting for a drunken, unkempt, washed-up ex-cop to stumble his way in, order a small black coffee, and sit across from me at the table furthest from the other patrons. On the surface, it’ll look like two of society’s most notorious rejects are meeting for a midnight snack. Below the gossamer lining, are two sinfully broken people with premeditated plans to delve into the illicit religion called addiction. I am consumerism’s priest, and Sebastian is blood from the mouth, pouring onto white robes in a gesture of sacrificial tithe. 

I shouldn’t support an addict’s habits. His or my own. 

Unfortunately, it is far too late for a personal exercise in anemic morality. I watch the door a little too closely and wait. The earl grey I ordered an hour ago is already cold and unpalatable, but I make use of the cup by tapping my fingers against the sleeve. My patience is wearing thin as I glance at the art nouveau clock ticking obtusely to my left. Sebastian is an hour late. 

When I check my phone, I find that the eleventh hour has come and gone, leaving a new day in its wake. Some small part of me quietly seethes as I account for all of my wasted time.  A smaller part of my psyche clings to the hope that Sebastian was struck by a car or detained by his former employees on the way here. It speaks volumes to my lack of self-worth when I hope a customer, my sole source of income at the moment, has perished prior to our meeting so I’m not inclined to make mistakes when he arrives. I already know exactly how this exchange is going to play out. It follows the same script every single time. I am always full of semen and regret once our business is complete, but I can’t bring myself to alter my course. 

It should be easy to pass on the drugs and walk the hell away. But nothing is or ever will be  _ simple  _ when it comes to Sebastian. He complicates things for himself and other people in a way that would be impressive, had I not become an active participant in  his perpetual maelstrom. 

I’m so caught up in my anger that I’ve let my gaze wander from the door to the offending numbers glowering at me. I look up only when a timid throat is cleared of a thick coating of anxiety. I meet eyes with Sebastian, who is now sitting across from me, a tired smile on his face and a small cup of coffee taking up real estate on the tabletop. There’s a light sheen across his forehead, settling into the deep lines on his face. I pucker my lips and tuck my phone away as his stench begins to permeate the inside of my sinuses. 

He reeks of stale alcohol and sweat, through the ruffled dampness to his hair suggests a recent shower. It must be his ragged clothes assaulting me. I saw him in that hideous olive shirt over three weeks ago, and our twice weekly meetings have betrayed me with the same outfit since then. Half-sleeve jersey knit, khakis, and steel toed boots leftover from his days at Krimson City Police Department. 

“Nice to see you, Ru.” 

“Don’t call me that.” 

Sebastian’s nose wrinkles as he brings a hand up from beneath the lip of the table, examines his nails, and then tucks his hand back into his lap. He repeats his action four more times before speaking again. 

“I brought double what I normally pay.” 

I shrug at him. “You are going to find yourself with the same amount, as per usual. Supplies are running lower than expected.” 

“What, your dealer’s not coming through?” 

Those details are not for him. “Mmh.” 

Sebastian wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He smiles at me again, and then shifts his weight. “You wanna--?”

“Fine. Yes. The sooner we end this, the sooner I can return to my life, minus you.” 

“You don’t mean that,” Sebastian says, sliding across the chair and angling his legs towards the door. He looks somewhat guilty, as if he were about to leave midway through an important meeting. 

“Do not try me.” 

“Lesson already learned on that one. You can be scary.” 

I’m standing by the time he finishes his statement. “Shut up. Either commit to the deal or I am going to take your money and sell your fix to someone else.” 

He doesn’t hesitate. We head outside together, leaving two abandoned cups on the table behind us. 

 

* * *

  
  
  


There’s a seedy, yet relatively unused, alleyway two and a half blocks away from the cafe. It’s a limb branching off of a poorly lit side street that would scream “danger” to any sane person. There is significantly less light here, even as slivers of city funded orange fluorescence cut through the night. I can hardly make out Sebastian's outline in an overcast of shadow and murk. Whenever I find myself in this situation, it is a painful reminder that I am dreadfully mired in this desolate wasteland. 

I have to remind myself that the only blame I can place is on my own indiscretions. I willingly opted to belong to this lifestyle, and I am the only person keeping myself here. Sebastian, no matter what influence he exerts on me, is not the one anchoring me to this nonsense. We are all masters of our own fates, I have simply loosened my hold on the reigns. Why else would I be tailing a drug addict into the darkest alleyway this side of Krimson City?

Sebastian comes to a stop ahead of me and collects himself once he’s bathed in the darkest shadow of the alleyway. He holds out a thick wad of cash to me, and I take it without question. The bills feel somewhat damp, and they are bound together with a brittle rubber band. I thumb across the edge, estimating how much this exchange is going to earn me. He’s not wrong. It truly is double what he normally pays. I chuff and tuck the cash into my back pocket, glaring at the husk of a man decomposing before me. 

Sebastian has this awful habit of absent mindedly rubbing his skin when he’s anxious. The sound of his calloused hands dragging up and down his arms is grating, and I snap my fingers at him. 

“Turn around.” 

I can feel his hesitation, even in the gloom. “Will I ever be able to stick myself?” 

“No. Turn around.” 

“Well, why not? It’s been long enough, don’t you think?” 

“This shit is going to kill you,” I state to him, plainly. “And you are far too uneducated about how your own anatomy works to even attempt to administer this without killing your damn self. Now turn  _ around _ , Sebastian.”

He doesn’t push me. He shuffles around until his back is to me. I am lucky I stand almost a whole head above this trainwreck, otherwise I’d need to crawl onto the dumpster to shoot him up. There are few things I am thankful for, and this is one of them. 

I remove both my phone, and a large syringe from a hidden pocket I’ve sewn into the lining of my jacket. I give the syringe a few good shakes, and make use of my phone’s flashlight function. Shining the light onto the back of Sebastian’s head greets me with evidence of the destructive association we have the audacity to call a relationship. 

The back of his neck is a supernova of sores and bruising. He prefers his injections on the right, and chronic abuse of the same site is showing some irreparable damage. Contusions so richly purple they’re almost black run down his neck and pool just below the hem of his shirt. The bruising is coupled with an abscess crusted in a thick layer of pus and blood. There’s smaller welts popping up around the inflammation, all of which are detailed with angry red streaks that reach out from the epicenter. 

“You know this is infected, right?” 

Sebastian shrugs. “I can’t feel it,” he lies.  

“You should go to a hospital.” 

“Why?” He asks, a sharpness curving along his words. “So they can see that a washed up, ex-cop turned junkie is still getting high, despite the fact he was given an option to be reinstated if he quit the rush?” 

“I didn’t know they’d given you that option. Congratulations,  _ Seb _ . What a dedicated man you are, throwing away you last opportunity for happiness and success to spend some of your time with me. I’m so honored.” 

“Cut the shit, Ruben.” 

“Ruvik.” 

“Whatever! Just shoot me up on the opposite side. I’ll deal with the shit later.” 

I turn the light off and tuck my phone back into my pocket before feeling along the left side of Sebastian’s neck until my fingertips connect with the curve at the base of his skull. I’ve done this particular action enough times to be able to locate the injection site with my eyes stitched shut. Three years is a long and treacherous road of addiction and the pitfalls that it brings.

I push Sebastian’s head forward, and make a V shape with my first two fingers above the skin covering his greater occipital nerve. In layman’s terms, I’m going to shove a needle into a large nerve, them pump a syringe full of a very powerful drug into his system so he can experience high unlike any other. This was about as close to love as Sebastian could experience. 

“Are you ready?” 

“Always,” Sebastian squares his shoulders, and I can feel his muscles quivering as he poorly attempts to control his fidgeting. Withdrawals are a poor look on him. 

“Don’t forget to breathe.” 

I position the needle tip between my fingers and stick in right in the center. Sebastian’s whole body tenses up beneath me and I put my finger on the plunger and release the drugs into his body. He makes a pathetic little noise, like an infant wallowing over a bump to the head, and his knees begin to buckle. I withdraw my free hand and grip his emaciated shoulder to keep him steady. 

“Hold still. I’m almost done.” 

I push the remaining liquid into him, remove the needle, cap it, and toss it haphazardly into an opening in the dumpster lid as a whistle of captive breath frees itself from Sebastian's lungs. I push him away from me, wipe my hands on my trousers, and let his ravaged body fall into a broken euphoria. He stumbles once, falling gracelessly against the dumpster. He grips onto the edge with one hand, hinges at the waist, and begins violently gagging. His body heaves, and I listen to the cacophony of a choking vomit echo through the alleyway. Sebastian hardly eats, so the acid spilling over his lips must be quite painful. 

Thirty seconds pass like this. When the hollow alleyway quiets, I know the high is settling in. Sebastian spits the bile from his mouth before he turns to look at me like an abused puppy. 

“Ruvik,” He croaks. 

“What? Do you want me on my knees?” 

“No,” Sebastian walks towards me with the appearance of someone with their dignity left intact, and places a thick hand on my shoulder. He pushes me against the cold, damp brick of some warehouse I don’t care about. “I want to suck your cock this time.” 

“I thought you were against being the faggot?” I ask, thinking back to the term he’d unaffectionately called me before he’d come to terms with the ever present question mark that is his whorish sexuality.

“Listen, I’m wasting away here. Better to try something than die wondering.” 

I scoff and roll my eyes. Six years in a relationship and he’d hardly touched me intimately, let alone put his precious mouth anywhere near my genitals. Still, my body is betraying me. Despite the display of unglamorous side effects not three minutes ago, the thought of Sebastian actually returning the sexual favor for once is electrifying to my dead sex drive. I haven’t seen my libido since I buried it after I left Sebastian for, what I believed to be, the last time. Something about the husky way he speaks to me stirs an urge kept deep below my sinew and viscera, as if it had been hibernating within my abdomen until this very instance. 

I expel hot breath into the night air. “Fine. Get on your knees.” 

Sebastian lets his dirty khakis find rest upon the asphalt, damp with rain from earlier. He grabs my hip bones with a desperate squeeze and places his warm mouth between my thighs, exhaling against me. My cock twitches against the unforgiving white denim, and Sebastian chuckles. 

I reprimand him by capturing a fistful of his unkempt hair, and pulling him towards me. “Don’t waste time.” 

Sebastian makes quick work of my button and fly, swiftly pulling the fabric away from my body. He drags my undergarments with the jeans until the fabric is pooling around my knees. My flesh is scarred and lacks much sensation, so the teasing bite of the cold is nothing but a gentle caress against my naked thighs. 

“You’re as beautiful as ever, Ruben.” 

His words cause my stomach to ache. I thrust my hips toward him to shut him up. 

Sebastian is not addled with the burden of manners or boundaries. He acts on instinct and impulse, never stopping for a ‘no’ or waiting for a ‘yes.’ Critical thinking was stripped from him years ago, when his gateway to drugs opened with alcoholism. I was there for the decline, and remember it clearly. 

Sebastian pulls me from my thoughts by running his dry tongue along my inner thigh. Some sensation remains in a few select spots, and this bastard still knows where all of them are. I frown as my muscles twitch expectantly in response to his touch. 

He sinks his jagged teeth into my skin, and I hiss at him while my arousal comes to life. The skin on my balls tightens as my cock strains against the night chill. I’m so accustomed to his roughness, his abuse, that it’s triggered this disgusting Pavlovian sexual response in me. Though, despite this, I don’t stop him. I indulge myself as if he were water in the desert. I lean further into the brick, letting the nipping edges of the clay dig into my spine. 

Sebastian kisses a line to my groin, runs his mouth along my balls, and then flattens tongue against my shaft. He leaves a long trail of sticky saliva on the underside of my cock before engulfing my tip. 

I gasp, still fisting his hair, and use this as leverage to pull him further down along my length. Finally, some goddamned control in my hands. 

Sebastian's fingers dig into my hips. He pushes against me, but I pull him forward. His resistance only gains him less freedom. 

I rut against his mouth, driving my cock down his throat. Sebastian heaves around me, and saliva spills over the edges of his mouth. He coughs, his cheeks billowing out. I smirk at him in the darkness and thrust my hips forward again. 

Sebastian's hands are going to leave bruises on my hips, but I can consider consequence that later. I tangle both hands into his mop of hair and fuck his mouth. Slowly, at first, but gradually working into a steady rhythm; thrust, gag, salivate, repeat. The pressure begins to build behind my navel wall, while the warnings of orgasm pool a toxic warmth upon my skin. I flush, but my flesh shows no signs of heat. 

The buildup is rapid, and the release encroaches sooner than I’d hoped it would. I speed up the snapping of my hips against Sebastian’s mouth, and he tries to pull away as my cock brushes against the back of his throat again and again. Soft sounds are escaping me, and I try to stop myself, but something primal in my DNA urges me on. It’s as if years of repressed anguish and anger are bubbling to the surface while I abuse this man’s mouth, and all of it will come crumbling down with my release. 

Thick strings of saliva are hanging off of Sebastian’s lips and chin. I continue to push into him, breath hitching in my chest and throat, and the muscles along my thighs tensing. 

“I’m going to cum in your mouth,” I tell him, open-mouthed and wanton. 

My navel tightens as the muscles in my abdomen contract, and sooner than desirable, I orgasm into the confines of Sebastian’s mouth. He retches hard enough to push semen and spit out of his nose. 

I twitch one final time and let Sebastian's hair go, pushing him off off me in the process. He coughs and backs away from my hands, harshly blowing his nose. 

I use my hands to pull the excess fluid off of my skin, quickly dress myself, and look at the crumpled man wiping his nose on his sleeve. My legs tingle as though they’d fallen asleep, and my, now flaccid, cock spasms as the fabric of my briefs brush it with my every step. 

“I will see you next week,” I offer as a parting goodbye. 

Sebastian is still coughing, his voice is fucked raw. “Yeah, see you then.” 

I leave him in that alleyway, unsure and uncaring about where he spends the time I am not around. I know he is, and will likely always be, a constant in my life. In three days’ time, I will see him again, and the actions of this night will repeat. Perhaps not the same exact way, but similarly enough that I can form a schedule that will be unaltered, with two static points to base my week around. 

For tonight, I’ll walk the ten blocks to my shitty apartment, shower to wash the remnants of Sebastian from my skin, then sleep through my regret and guilt. The sun will always rise tomorrow, and I will be the same when the dawn touches my skin. 

 

* * *

 

**CHAPTER I. ✦ PART II.**

**SEBASTIAN.**

 

I don’t remember the first time I used STEM. I only remember the rush. The exhilaration.  Euphoria laced so tangibly with ecstasy that it made an orgasm feel like a tickle fight. Abuse could feel like intimacy, and hate transforms into the most enduring love. 

It was a very slippery slope from being the lead detective on track to become chief of the KCPD, to what my former colleagues would call a junkie. I went from morally strong to trading my moral compass in for a bottle of Jack and some Oxy. My decline changed me from within. I became exactly the kind of person I used to claim not to understand, and would indiscriminately put away to meet a quota for a bonus on my next paycheck. 

There’s a lot of shame attached to me now. Shame in where my roots run deep, ranging anywhere from how much I’d mistreated other addicts as a member of the Force, to shame in what I do and have done for a high. Guilt saturates the shame and the toxic combination of the two bag me up and steep me in the waters of irredeemable troublemaking. 

Most of the time, when I can think clearly, I don’t want to be the way that I am. I don’t really enjoy prowling around at night while I’m twitching at every small noise. I live in the urban heart of a city built on the bones of depression and battered people. Krimson City is shrouded in overcast nine of the twelve months in a year. The remaining three are either spotty sunbreaks and torrential downpour. There’s really no in between, and the weather keeps this place as sleepy as an Urbana can get. 

But a city of sin never sleeps, and Krimson City is painted red and black. I’m gagging on my own saliva and squinting through the darkness as I watch Ruvik, dressed unironically in all white, ghost through the night. He drifts around a corner and he’s gone, leaving me with the taste of semen and my own regret. The back of my neck throbs where he stuck me, and my hands are starting to go numb. I’m going to need to find a place to crash where I won’t get picked up by the police. 

The knees of my trousers are saturated with alley grime and rainwater, and I do my best to brush some of the tiny debris clinging to the fabric away as I stand. My legs feel weak and unwilling to hold my weight, but I force myself to toddle off in the opposite direction of my longtime lover and drug dealer. 

Ruvik and I have a complicated relationship. I love him, and he knows that, but I’m not the best at showing him that I’m serious. We lived together for eight years, were romantically involved for six, and three years later, we suck each other’s cocks in dank alleyways after he shoots me up. Sure, this isn’t fairytale, it’s not a daydream either, but some people just can’t avoid each other. Ruvik and I are that way. 

I use the brick walls to steady myself as the drug surges around my body, striking my system like tiny bolts of electricity. Some lighthearted part of me is always brought back to life when I’m high, and it disappoints me slightly that Ruvik never sticks around to see it. 

After all, that part of me is the Sebastian that he fell in love with. I met Ruvik when I was barely thirty, overager, and at the very prime of my life. He liked me for my, as he called it, “unbridled wit and lack of tact.” I’m still not quite sure why those were my selling points to a man who’s a literal genius, but I never stopped to question it. I was just happy that he liked me,  _ and  _ stuck around while I attempted to label my sexuality. 

Ruvik is an unconventional kind of beautiful. He’s covered head to toe in burn scars that required some pretty major skin grafting, but years of treatments have allowed him to recover some minimal feeling, and even grow hair on half of his head. When I met him, his hair was long enough to hang down his shoulder, and he often wore it over the clear case that served as a replacement for the bits of skull that were irreparably fractured in The Accident. Most people thought he was horrible to look at, like a circus attraction. A modern day bearded lady. 

From the first day we met, I knew I needed him like I need oxygen to breathe and water to drink. It verged on obsession, but Ruvik is a diamond in the rough. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anybody else. 

How fortunate for me he didn’t have a steady place to live when I met him. He moved right into my spare room, and I moved on him after two years of patient friendship. We belonged to each other. No matter how Ruvik sees it, he knows the truth. Even if he won’t admit it, we still belong not even to ourselves. 

I stumble along some unlit backstreets, tripping over garbage and loose stone as I struggle to find a usable pattern in my footing. The air is thick with the scent of passing rain, stained with the heavy smog of overflowing dumpsters and car exhaust. Krimson City is not clean, the streets are about as unkempt as the people who sleep on them. There’s always a passing stench or a scuttling cockroach to remind you that Urbanas are not paradise, but postcard images hiding an unsavory truth. Few people really want to examine how bad things have gotten here, but most people actively ignore the problem until it shows up on their doorstep. Most people didn’t even have fences until used needles and tooters started showing up on the edges of their perfectly manicured grass. 

Krimson City is a wealthy area. Satirically called a ‘Gentleman's Town,’ the residents here like to beat their scandals to death and bury them beneath the concrete in their basements. Sometimes literally. 

There is no addressing the drug problem that has moved in. No addressing the lack of response from the residents. And especially, no addressing the KCPD’s involvement in all this mess. 

When I was making a senior detective’s salary, I lived in Park Ridge, the ritzy area where gentrification was a casual pastime. All of my neighbors were regulars customers to rehab or jail, but the effort put into covering these infractions up took precedence over seeking legitimate help. Money went to shady journalists as an effort to hang out somebody else’s dirty laundry before any one person could get to your own. It was disgraceful, and I watched this with the critical eye of someone who’s been shot by white men who beat their wives and lie about it. 

When I leave my thoughts and come back into myself, I’ve collapsed behind a row of cans covered with a tarp. It reeks of old food and mildew, but it’s the best I can do on short notice. Euphoria is coursing through me while I take the long stroll down memory lane, a winding and treacherous road that leads back to the violent withdrawals I call sobriety. Laying in a puddle of rotten food excrement feels like laying in the shallow tide on a white sand beach in Malibu. I roll onto my back and close my eyes, walking off the beaten path of consciousness, and relish the STEM flowing in my veins and hijacking my nerves. Misery loves company, but ecstasy needs no companions. 

Before STEM, it was just pills. And before pills, it just was alcohol and cigarettes. Funny how that gateway opened, I took a single step in, and tumbled ass over face down the slope into injecting the really hard stuff. I think about my part time alcoholism as a crutch to hold me up until I can get my next fix. STEM is long lasting, and the comedowns from it are violent and ridiculously painful. Like your whole brain is aching, your synapses are snapping in half, and every fibre of your being is attempting to tear itself apart at a molecular level. 

I try to remain somewhat sober and remind myself about consequences, but I’m too blissed out to spend much energy on the negatives. Instead, I hum to myself, folding my hands across my abdomen as Ruvik’s face plays behind my eyelids. I roll through reels of memory, watching our former life together on a silver screen. 

 

_ He’s in my bed, asleep next to me, hair falling in his face while his soft breathing pushes wisps away from his mouth. We kissed for the first time last night when I cried over the realization I was following in my father’s footsteps, alcoholism and all. He didn’t mind that I tasted like whiskey and cigarettes.  _

_ We’re at the kitchen table, eating breakfast, and he’s flinging the sugared raisins from his off-brand Bran Flakes at me. I pick them off of my clothes and the table, shoving them into my mouth. He makes a face at me and eats his cereal in the other room, trying to hide the suppressed laughter quivering his shoulders and smile cracking across his chapped lips.  _

_ We’re in our, formerly my, bed, covered in sweat and body fluids, and he’s dozing off in my arms.  _

_ I met Myra at work. She was beautiful. Probably still is. _

_ The first time I hit him was our first fight. He left me that night for the first time, but came back an hour later. We were both covered in blood and bruises by two a.m., and he told me if I ever hit him again, he’d kill me. I told him I loved him and I’m afraid of losing him. He told me that I'm just like my fucking father. I told him to eat shit and die.  _

_ We reconciled for a while. Things were peaceful again. I kissed Ruvik on the mouth before I left for work. He started sleeping in our bed again.  _

_ I stayed late on a Wednesday, lying over text that I was behind in my work. Truthfully, a coworker had kissed me, and I kissed him right back. When I came home that night, after washing another man’s saliva off of skin, I made Ruvik dinner and we talked about how we’d probably never get married. We fucked until the sun came up, and he sunk his teeth into my skin. I still have the scar. Ruvik said it served as a reminder of who I belong to.   _

_ I spent a lot more late nights at work. First with a man, then with a woman.  _

_ Ruvik and I fought more. I told him I loved him. He threatened to leave. He didn’t.  _

_ A positive pregnancy test was left on my desk. I stole a few Oxys from an overlooked purse in the evidence room. They tasted awful, grinding between my teeth, and washed down with whiskey from a flask I kept tucked in my waistband.  _

_ Things continued to fall apart. I stole drugs, Ruvik sold most of them, and I ate the leftover stash. He started to distance himself. We fucked a few times when I was sober. I told him he was a fucking tragedy, and he told me he’d prefer I die. We passed out on the living room floor together night after night. Sometimes I would drink, and sometimes I’d be high.  _

_ I come home so high Ruvik has to call an ambulance. Something aches inside of me as I'm strapped to a gurney. I'm released in 24 hours, and come home to Ruvik destroying my stash. I push him away and call him obscenities I can hardly remember. He pushes me back. We get into another physical fight. They seem to be happening more and more.  _

_ I take a second trip to the hospital. Ruvik says something. Something about six years and wasted time. I beg him to stay. He leaves.  _

_ I get a call from him a month later. He says he’s got a surprise for me.  _

 

I start to nod off, smiling still. Even the most bitter of memories taste sweet while I’m at the behest of STEM. 

When I fall asleep, my insides crack. I knew this was coming. 


End file.
